Why I Voted for Trump

Preface: The following blog post essay is a Guest Post; the author was invited by me to submit his explanation of why he voted for Donald Trump in the most recent U.S. presidential election. He does not speak for me (which is not to say I disagree with everything he says). Many people I know wonder why any reasonable person would have voted for Trump for president. I know the author of this guest post very well; we have been close friends for many years. He is an evangelical Christian but not a fundamentalist; he is not committed to any political party or ideology. (We have talked many times over the years about these matters and I know his thinking about them well.) He is a retired white man. He is extremely intelligent with a very high IQ. I think many people want to know why someone like him would vote for someone like Trump for president. Here is his answer. Note: He does not read this blog and will not be reading or responding to comments. I will only post responses that are civil, calm, respectful and reflect careful, thoughtful reading of the essay. Please keep them brief (no more than 100 words) and only post one response. I will not be answering questions about the author or anything he says in his guest post. It is my considered opinion that his explanation is a well-articulated expression of a very common one held by many people who voted for Trump. That is why I am posting it here.

Why I Voted For Trump

All of us who voted for Trump did so because the alternative was Hillary. Dr. Olson, however, asked me to flesh that out a little.

During the presidential campaign, as well as in Black Lives Matter protests, some people carried signs saying, “AMERICA WAS NEVER GREAT!”

I get it. We (European settlers) found a virgin continent about 500 years ago. The aboriginal inhabitants had lived sustainably on the land for thousands of years, but we rounded up these inhabitants, took away their land and way of life, broke our promises, and believed it made no sense to let a few savages stand in the way of progress.

We imported black slaves from Africa, profited unconscionably from their forced labor, and regarded them as subhuman primates.

I could go on for pages.

Yet America was great. She has fallen well short of perfection, but America was founded on great ideas, ideas not even conceivable to anyone up until a very short time before America’s founding. Yes, Athens had a sort of democracy, but it was really more of an oligarchy. King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, but it granted rights primarily to the landed aristocracy.

During the Enlightenment, radical ideas circulated: Ideas about universal human rights, equality, freedom, and democracy. Just then, a whole new virgin continent was discovered, and men and women imbued with these noble ideas were presented with a one-time-only opportunity to try them out under ideal conditions. Many thought this was divine providence.

I find myself torn about the wisdom of the American Experiment. Can ordinary, fallen people ever hope to form a nation “conceived and dedicated” to government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” that will “long endure”?

After only two centuries, we are, I am afraid, proving that they cannot. And that makes me sad. It makes me ashamed to be a human being. It leaves me confused. I am proud to be an American; but when I look at the way we have squandered our unique, God-given opportunity, I am ashamed.

Less than 250 years after this great experiment officially began, we have made it into a reeking cesspool. Our insatiable appetite for drugs is making Latin America nearly uninhabitable. STD’s are raging out of control. The internet brings 24 hour pornography into all our homes. LGBTQ psychosexual pathologies are flaunted, celebrated, and encouraged. Women fight for the right to rip babies from their wombs as a

means toward fornication with impunity. Here in the richest, freest, and most powerful nation in the world, depression, anxiety, and suicide are ever more epidemic. We are sick unto death. We have declared the loving Heavenly Father persona non grata, and have sold our national soul to

Satan. Freedom has become license to indulge every hideous, filthy thought we can come up with. The American Way is now to promote ever more freedom by adding ever more filth to the cesspool, and encouraging more and more people to wallow in it.

What is a free, democratic society like? Is it fragile? Should it be used carefully and with great restraint lest it be crushed? Or is it like a great iron machine that thrives on abuse? Are freedom and democracy the natural state of humankind? Or does fascism lie right below the surface, ready to restore order when freedom and democracy naturally decay into anarchy and depravity?

Has America already reached such a nadir that she is ready for fascism? Will my vote for Trump help slow the incoming tide of anarchy and depravity?

Or will my vote for Trump prove to be a vote for fascism? Time will tell.

But a vote for Hillary is clearly a vote in favor of further tinkering with the very infrastructure of Western Civilization and democracy which has been so slowly and painfully built over millenia. Hillary is the personification of America’s Party of Social Jenga. And Jenga always ends in collapse.